‘Bikini Climber’ & Social Media Star Falls To Her Death In Taiwan

TAIPEI: A hiker who became famous on social media for taking selfies on top of mountain peaks dressed in a bikini has died after falling down a ravine in Taiwan’s Yushan national park.

Her lifeless body was located by a helicopter on Monday and searchers hamperd by bad weather were on Wednesday still trying to retrieve her body.

Gigi Wu — dubbed the “Bikini Climber” by fans — used a satellite phone on Saturday to tell friends she had fallen down a ravine in Taiwan’s Yushan national park and badly injured herself.

“The weather conditions in the mountains are not good, we have asked our rescuers to move the body to a more open space and after the weather clears we will make a request for a helicopter to bring the body down,” Lin Cheng-yi, from the Nantou County Fire and Rescue Services, told reporters.

Officials said Wu had told friends she was unable to move the lower half of her body after a fall of some 20-30 metres but was able to give her coordinates.

She is the latest in a string of social media adventure seekers who have met an untimely end.

Last October, the bodies of an Indian couple were found at the bottom of a popular overlook in California’s Yosemite National Park after hikers alerted officials to their camera equipment at the top of the cliff.

New Taipei City native Wu, 36, built up a sizeable social media following through photos of herself at the top of mountains dressed in bikinis.

She usually wore hiking clothes to scale the mountains, only changing into a bikini once she reached the top.

In an interview with local channel FTV last year, she said she had scaled more than 100 peaks in four years.

“I put on a bikini in each one of the 100 mountains. I only have around 97 bikinis so I accidentally repeated some,” she said.

When asked why she did it, she replied: “It just looks so beautiful, what’s not to like?”